


No Sale

by RaeSeddon



Series: No Sale [1]
Category: Dungeons and Dragons cartoon
Genre: Gen, Rich parents parenting badly, seriously the way he talks about his dad in City at the Edge of Midnight hits ever Douche Alarm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-20 09:28:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14892023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaeSeddon/pseuds/RaeSeddon
Summary: Eric's parents are finally starting to notice he's different after a weekend at the amusement park. They handle it the way you'd expect. The first part in a series about all the kid's parents post-series.





	1. Dropped Change

**Author's Note:**

> Everything about Eric screams Rich Young Republican, so his parents are Reganite Conservatives. Probably made their money in the stock market. I figured it would take them a while to notice anything was wrong, let alone deal with it like Actual Parents Who Gave A Shit. Also the scotch Cora mentions is like 5,000$ a bottle. F****** rich people.

“Ehrlich, there’s something wrong with our son.” The words fell like dropped change from Cora Greaves’ lips one morning, clattering across the stone and glass countertop to make coffee in a mug at the other end quiver expectantly. Heavy things. Heavier still the head that barely nudged from the morning paper to acknowledge them.

“Something we should be concerned about, pet?” A slight rustle of paper and she felt the familiar weight of a single dark eye settling over her.

“The groundskeeper found him on the estate this morning.” Cora continued evenly, picking up the dropped change one coin at a time and counting it: _There. Is. Something. Wrong. With. Our. Son. Subtotal + taxes and all other associated fees of raising a child = 0.00$ NO SALE_

“He was camping by the lake like some sort of... _indigent_ \--you know that poor man almost called the police on him?”

The newspaper was finally retracted to reveal a thin, stern face with hair that faded handsomely black to grey at short sideburns. Ehrlich Greaves was a darkly attractive man at 46, a perfect offset to his wife, who sat at an elegant 41. “That’s the fourth time in two weeks,” he said, brown eyes pinching shut. “Have you by chance _asked_ him where this new affinity for the outdoors has come from?”

Cora tried stacking the change differently in her head.

_Is there something wrong with our son?_

There is.

_Subtotal, taxes, total = 0.00$_

“I was too mortified to ask. Even if I wasn’t he didn’t say a word to me. Just, took his morning shower, ate the breakfast Karina prepared and went to school.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s the matter but I simply won’t tolerate it. Greaves don’t _rough it._ I’m going to call Doctor Lang and have him come by after dinner tonight--set out the Orcadian Scotch he likes.”

Yes, that was the way-- when your child was... _ill_ , you called the doctor. She put the dropped change back into her purse and remembered to zip it. Tightly.


	2. Exit Stage Left

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mother knows, even if she doesn't understand what she's supposed to know. Presto's Chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Presto has always come from a really stable household in my mind-- single parent-- but his mother is exceedingly loving and accepting. I actually had the idea for this one before Eric's chapter, but because the title of the series comes from his, that's how the posting order happened.

The cards were a meditation, the swift  _fwipfwipswish_ blending into the flicker of a projector that played behind her son's eyes. Although she couldn't see the images, she sensed them when their eyes met--amber orbs distant; slightly sad and sometimes fearfully wide. Maggie hesitated in front of the open bedroom door, waiting for him to notice her.

"Albert? Sweetheart?" 

"Yeah mom?" 

"Did anything happen? You've been..." she paused, searching for a word that wouldn't betray her worry. "You've been quiet since the amusement park last month."

The red-head shrugged. "Just tired-- school's getting rough-- not like that!" he assured as her expression shifted. "I'm not being bullied again. No one bullies me anymore."

And that was the  _other_ thing: somewhere in the last few weeks high school social politics hadn't just ceased to bother him, but had ceased to exist  _entirely._ She told herself it happened: when kids grew up things that had been life or death simply no longer held that power over them. An objectivity replaces it, but objectivity needs  _experience._

Social Anxiety and Desire to Fit In: Exit Stage Left.

But when? When did the timid, stammering boy she'd known for fifteen years slip into the wings, and who was she seeing now? the understudy or the leading man? There was no doubt.

"I'm glad to hear that honey, but you can talk to me about anything. Really."

"I know,"  _fwipflickswish --_ the cards continued to move between deft hands, dancing between nimble fingers: vanishing, reappearing in time to the images she still could only sense. 

"I love you Albert." The words felt vaguely helpless, but what else was there for it? She shuffled over the threshold, leaning down and pushing shaggy bangs back, planting a kiss on a freckled forehead.

"Goodnight mom." 

The reels of the projector changed.

 


	3. Doubting Mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are things parents should never have to think, so why is it that they're always the first things to come to mind? Sheila and Bobby's chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was an exceedingly difficult chapter to get out because in creating Sheila and Bobby's parents, their mother ended up with some very...unfortunate assumptions about her own children, which I wasn't expecting and honestly had trouble wrapping my brain around. As a result this chapter runs longer than the others. And goes Places. Trigger warning for implied inappropriate sibling relationships.

She’d been her brother’s shadow the moment he came home from the hospital, an eager babysitter when she was old enough; even a Halloween in-joke -- Bobby as Peter Pan and Sheila in head-to-toe black, the errant shadow. They’d begun to grow apart when Sheila started high school and Bobby was still stuck in middle: the two buildings separate but on the same grounds. It had been enough. They made their own friends, Bobby finally a few his own age; so it was a surprise when Sheila suggested they go to the amusement park ‘like old times.’ Bonnie remembered her son hesitating a moment.

“Will Hank be there?” He asked dubiously.

“Of course!”

“ _Eeeeeewwww_...I’m not coming on one of your dates! That's gross.”

“We’re not -- it’s not a date, we’re _all going_ ,” her daughter shot back with a laugh.

Feet waved under the table in thought as Bobby tapped a pencil on the brown paper cover of his math book, blond bangs obscuring the slightest frown. “I’m a little old for the amusement park, _Sheila._ ”

“You’re _nine_ , besides what does that say about _me_?” She quirked a narrow eyebrow at him, daring him to reply.

“That you’re _ooooold!_ ” With a belling laugh the two shot up from the kitchen table after each other, tearing into the living room -- Sheila only just managing to scoop him into her arms as he attempted to escape up the stairs. Bonnie smiled to herself, flicking an affectionate glance at her husband where he stood over the stove, clearing up the last of dinner. She gave her blessing for the outing with the caveat of homework and chores being finished in advance.

Things started going wrong the moment they returned: a door slamming followed by a stampede of feet up the stairs and yelling that put Bonnie’s heart in her throat-- but when her two children nearly battered the bedroom door down, hearty, hale and whole, she was willing to chalk it up to sugar and adrenaline. Robert teased her gently about switching to decaf.

Morning brought the first tinge of true concern -- a babble of whispers silencing at the first sound of a foot on the stairs. They’d managed an impressive Saturday breakfast, everything from pancakes and waffles to halves of grapefruit, bacon and eggs.

“Is this an apology or are you telling me we need to go grocery shopping?” She asked.

A pause. “ _Both?_ ” Her son offered, ice-clear blue eyes darting to his sister for -- guidance? permission? It was too demure for the playful secrets they usually kept. When a strawberry blond head dipped, he stood from the table, rinsed his plate and slipped away with only a squeeze to Sheila’s hand.

Then, the night terrors started. Bobby hadn’t had one in years and Sheila never, but at the first jolting scream into a room that was [too dark, too empty, too quiet?] the other sibling was there faster than either of them.

“I got this Dad,” Sheila glanced up at her father, half-pleading and he gave in, closing the bedroom door with a bleary shake of his head.

“You shouldn't have done that Robert.” Bonnie closed the book she was reading, her husband catching the PhD on the end of the author’s name and nothing more. She’d been pretending to read it for weeks; an excuse to stay up and listen for the padded footsteps and impossibly gentle turn of a knob that meant one of her children would be waking up in the wrong room.

“It’s just a rough patch Bon -- they happen.”

“He’s wetting his bed.”

Robert froze at the edge of the bed. “How do you--?”

“Sheila does the laundry when we’re out, I caught it on the baby monitor. Unless we have a cat burglar who breaks in to do our laundry.”

“You’ve been spying on our children?” Robert winced. “Bonnie, if either of them notice they will _never_ trust us again. They’ll never believe I didn't have anything to do with it.”

“Our seventeen year old daughter and ten year old son can’t stay out of each other’s beds. There’s a _word_ for tha--”

“Don’t be _perverse_ , Bon,” he blustered out an insulted laugh. “They’ve always been close. Maybe the amusement park--” hands waved helplessly, “kicked things up? Look, Sheila will be graduating and applying to colleges soon. I think it finally hit them this is their second to last year living under the same roof.”

Bonnie cast her gaze to the vanity mirror, hating the doubt she saw there. She didn’t want to recognise the woman staring back because recognising her meant admitting she had been thinking things no...normal mother ever would.

“I want to believe that, god I do, but Rob the signs are all there.” She wiped at her eyes before finally breaking the staring contest with the mirror -- Doubting Thomas that the woman who lived there was.

“ _Christ_ , you’re serious? Don’t you think that insults over a decade of parenting experience?” He balled a fist over the covers before finally sliding his legs under the sheet. “We may have left them on their own more than we should have but give us -- _fuck_ \-- give yourself some credit.” Socked feet nudged Bonnie’s. “Honestly, listen to yourself, do you really think--?”

“Then what’s the goddamn mystery? Robert -- they are keeping something from us and _I need to know what._ Don’t you?” She scrutinised him a beat, waiting to feel his reply before he spoke it.

“I -- yes -- Jesus -- I don’t know. We’ll have to get them alone,” Robert finally conceded and the comment was nearly enough for her to let out a dark chuckle. “What haven’t we tried in the last seventeen years that will magically work now?” He asked her, grasping a hand over the covers to squeeze his beneath it.

“Sheila’s driving lessons,” she said after a pause long enough to mask the fact that she’d thought of it a week and a half ago. “I’ll tackle Bobby while you’re out, somehow.” _Literally, if need be._

“I don’t know--”

“You still trust her Rob, it has to be you. She smells disapproval from me a mile away. And let me get something straight -- I want you to be right. I _need_ \--” 

“I know, you will be.” He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and kissed her cheek, and for the first time in weeks she met her own gaze in the mirror and held it. The defiance that flickered back was a match flame in the dark, but it was almost enough. For tonight, almost had to be enough.


	4. Out of Ambit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diana's mother contemplates the weaving of fates, and by extension, the dangers of naming your children after goddesses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, a _massive_ thank you to @Zabbers on Tumblr for helping tease the last of this chapter out of my brain and beta-ing it, you are a saint. This entire chapter is a play at Diana's partial divinity in Child of the Stargazer, and how the parents of a divine child process the concept.

Vera dreamed of the stars before her oldest daughter was born-- an endless road stretching to the primordial depths of the universe-- the size of it, and the sheer lonely cold of darkness between each glittering point of light shuddered at her heart. When she told her grandmother, the old woman asked her a few pointed questions and promptly set about making a quilt in the Old Way--a map, she said--to lead the babygirl home.

After Diana went to the amusement park, the quilt caught Vera’s eye for the first time in years where it rested, pinned vertically to her closet wall. She counted off the symbols in each block (a lantern, a box, a hammer and anvil) before tracing a finger around the central design: a many-spoked wheel, pointing in all ten directions. A compass. All this overlaid in spiralling scroll-work of every color.

“ _Thas’ the rainbow road._ ” She repeated the words in the voice she first heard them in--a thick, easy tongue, wet by generations of southern living. “Follow tha, and it getchu home _juss fine.”_

Sometimes Vera imagined there was a pattern to the road, finding the subtle symmetries and then losing them in a blink, the path dipping back into the understitching of the universe.

The sudden urge to take a seam-ripper to the edges gripped her as a long nail picked at a single weakened thread. Her daughter’s destiny was there: between what she could and couldn't see, and the temptation to _look_ had never been so strong as it was since _that_ night.

Diana had taken her first steps on the road, she was sure of it, because she’d also _lost it._ Why else had she awoken to find her daughter blanketed in star charts and reams of her father’s research, tracing arcs and parabola, connecting dots she only understood in the broadest terms? Her father had tried to explain it, but it was easier when she was little and only wanted to find _herself_ in the night’s sky. As she grew he’d told her that around every star of her in the sky there were other planets and to never, never forget that she had her own orbit, her own pull. But she was out of ambit now, as if she’d been flung out of her own gravity well and set adrift with her feet still on the ground.

“Find it baby, you gotta find it.” Her finger hopped tracks, tracing a way back to the center of the wheel. “Not everything is one foot in front of the other.” A fingertip swirled over the circumference of the wheel befor stabbing at the very center: a lone, raised silver star. (This was where her grandmother and husband differed in opinion: Faith told her that the center of the universe was brilliant with Creation, while Science told her husband it was dark with Void, matter stretched and unspooling into nothing.) The abrupt thought that her daughter may be able to answer which streaked across Vera’s mind so brightly it left spots behind her eyes. She knew it was true, “It’ll lead you back _juss fine_ babygirl, Don’t you worry none.” Her feet followed her hand, weaving around each other in a feather stitch in an effort to summon the road from the fabric itself-- but it wasn’t hers to walk. As if to tell her this, her eyes blurred again, the road receding into the quilt-- the way as lost as the walker. “Don’t you worry none.”


End file.
